Good vs. Bad Marketing 👇

Today’s guest is the Senior Director of Global Marketing at the 7th largest company in the world. 

*quickly Googles the 7th largest company in the world*

Meet Dave Kaufman, leading Marketing efforts at Meta since early 2017, running partnerships with celebrities like Billie Eilish, and nominated for the AdAge 40 under 40, Dave is a legend in the space.

I recently had him on The Marketing Millennials Podcast and he broke down what makes GOOD MARKETING and what makes BAD MARKETING.

Here’s what he had to say in his own liiiiiightly edited words.

1. Good Marketing Starts With:

“Good Marketing is done by Marketers who have actually taken the time to learn and study the field (and who read The Marketing Millennials LOL).

I feel like it should be non-controversial, but it’s a relatively controversial topic in the world of Marketing because the industry loves to say you don’t need any education and you can trust your gut. But I am a big proponent of Marketers really investing in growing their skills, growing their education.

That doesn’t necessarily mean getting an MBA, it doesn’t mean that you can’t work in Marketing if you didn’t study it in undergrad, but I think it’s impossible to do good Marketing without an appreciation and growth mindset learning from the past (YES). 

The second big thing that makes good Marketing is understanding the difference between tactics and strategy. 

This is the biggest shortcoming I have run into throughout my career. 

Everyone is excited to get to the advertising or the tactic that they’re going to ship, the thing that wins the award or film the TikTok (that’s real).

But good marketing work doesn’t come from running straight to tactics. There’s a huge amount of work that needs to get done before that and that step is so often skipped.

The combination of those two things are the backbone of good marketing  in 2024.  

2. Four Quick-Hitter Tips:

There are four things I advise Marketers.

1️⃣. Have you taken the time to read Ogilvy on advertising? Have you read Bill Bernbach’s Book on the history of advertising? These historical documents that really underpin where the field came from. In Marketing there is such a chase to be the newest and first to novelty that the idea of studying what worked 50 years ago is rejected. But 9 times out of 10, looking backwards will teach you a ton about it where you are today (retweet). 

2️⃣. Keep up with data and research. Understand the theories and laws that underpin the work that you’re doing. Whether you’re leveraging The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, The World Advertising Research Center, stay up to date. 

3️⃣. The third is keeping up with the great thinkers in advertising today. I follow Byron Sharp, Jenny Romanek, and Orlando Wood just to name a few. 

4️⃣. The fourth is to keep up with interesting work, not just in advertising and in Marketing, but in creative pursuits in general. You can keep up with Ad Age, The Drum, and Marketing Week, but you’ll find inspiration in the most unlikely sources from TV shows to movies.

3. Great Strategy Comes From:

Great strategy comes from a couple things, the first being diagnosis. Do you actually understand your market orientation, the business problem, and the needs of the customers in the industry that you’re in?

Have you done qualitative research? Have you done quantitative research? Have you done ethnographic research? Simply put, are you taking the time to understand your brand, company and the actual market that you’re playing in and the customers that you’re interacting with? (I’m saving these Q’s for later.) 

There are a million different definitions of strategy. It’s one of the most overused words, but I think of strategy like a road trip. What do I mean? Being conscious of the landscape in between where you are now and where you want to be is vital for a successful road trip. 

It comes down to asking yourself three questions:

🤷‍♂️: Who are you targeting and why?

💪: What’s your positioning and what do you stand for as a brand? 

🧐: What are your objectives? 

That’s not a laundry list of everything that you’d like to achieve, but those are a few smart objectives that are time bound with clear objectives that you can pin data behind to ensure your strategy is a success (I love simple). 

4. Performance vs. Brand:

Roughly 60% of your budget should go towards brand/demand creation and 40% should go towards performance Marketing/direct response (the 60/40 rule!!).

It’s different from case to case, but as a rough rule of thumb this shows an ability to not exhaust leads or latent demand that you might have for a whatever you’re offering, while also ensuring that you’re building on long term horizons as well.

So how are you making sure that you’re perceived in the way that you want to be? How do you make sure that you’re starting to build the audience of tomorrow who will be purchasing your product in the future? 

At any given time, 5% of your audience is in the market for your product or service. If you over invest in performance Marketing then so much will be wasted instead of investing into keeping the brand top of mind so that when the 95% is ready to buy, you’re the first brand they think of.

For me, performance and brand Marketing is not an either or, I focus on how to make the two work together (LOVE).

I personally think performance Marketing is a bad term for the process which creates this dichotomy of picking one or the other.

You can have the shiny brand stuff like influencers sponsorships or you can have the stuff that actually performs. 

The reality is it’s the combination of the two that make sure you’re successful. Not just today, but also into the future as well. And being able to balance that short and long term horizon is what keeps a brand and business healthy. 

5. What Makes BAD Marketing:

Bad Marketing lacks Marketers behind it who have done their homework, whether it’s in the field of Marketing or on the diagnosis and strategy development (BOOM). 

Bad Marketing errs to the side of chasing different tactics and not having clear goals or objectives other than launching advertising for the sake of launching advertising. 

When you’re celebrating vanity metrics that have no correlation to business performance, or if you’re just chasing creative awards or a certain number of followers on socials, all those are indicative of bad Marketing that is not underpinned by strategy. 

I think Mad Men did a lot to show an inside look of what advertising and Marketing looked like once upon a time, but it also created this world of Marketers who fancy themselves as the next Don Draper and jump straight into the next pitch for the creative idea.

As well, a lot of what we’ve seen in the last couple of years is a real focus on short term activation. 

If you’re only chasing short term goals and focused on performance today or tomorrow it might not look like bad Marketing at the moment, but you’re unlikely to build a healthy flywheel for your business in the long run (*mic drop*). 

To me, there are unlimited ways to build bad Marketing, but a lot of the commonalities are around lack of strategy, lack of education, and lack of clear goals.”